Do you want to look more sophisticated in print?

By limiting your color palette and using colors low in saturation you can instantly look more sophisticated, elite and expensive. To proclaim these "high-end" qualities to the world, cut down on your use of color.

High end design is the realm of black, white and grey. Think of luxury cars, they are black, white or silver. If you were to see a purple mercedes, it would feel off or even wrong. In art terms, this is called being less saturated or if you go all the way to gray scale unsaturated.

For example: Ads for fragrances, especially for men, appear in using little or even no color - "low saturation" and low contrast.  If you look at the ad for "Dark Obsession" you can barely read the name and "for men" almost disappears. The bottle has just barely a hit of brown in it, you may not even be able to detect it here. Notice  how the bottle has a strong highlight on it. That is the point of highest contrast. High contrast draws your eye to it. When viewing the piece you will certainly land on the bottle, you can't help it. This is a pure branding piece with no sales copy! 

In the Chrome Azzaro sample, you can see how they have limited their color palette, using a low saturated image with a bit of light blue to highlight the product. Their typography is more readable than the Calvin Klein ad because it is a sales piece, in contrast to the branding example above.

When using these more sophisticated low contrast, low saturation color palettes be sure to keep your text readable.

You can remember this concept by thinking of high contrast as and shouting low contrast as whispering.

Keep an eye out for this type of color scheme and let me know where you find it. 

The door hanger that hung itself

On my front door I found this door hanger. It grabbed my attention instantly as it looked like a paint swatch. Without reading anything my brain when instantly to it's paint chip file, which led to further inspection.

Upon looking at it more closely, a second time, I saw there were words under the color blocks. It reads, "Why it takes a college education to paint your home." In art terms we call this a "second reading" as it was not the first thing we saw, it took a closer or second look.

The headline "Why it takes a college education to paint your home." tied nicely to the logo and name of the company "College Works Painting." The tagline under the logo "A higher degree of painting" followed the theme. It art and branding terms we would say its cohesive.

Flipping it to the backside we are rewarded with their second headline "Ninety-nine percent of a great paint job has nothing to do with painting." As you can see this is followed by a string of nine bullet points, logo, phone, website and license number. The 888 number and noticeable lack of address raise my suspicions. This is starting to feel like some kind of thin franchise deal. Speaking of thin, the paper is lightweight and the ink from the other side is visible. In art lingo we would say "it's bleeding through." The front is printed in just one color, blue and the back is printed in two colors, blue and black. The black is used as a percentage and appears grey.

They totally lost me with the headline on the backside of the piece "Ninety-nine percent of a great paint job has nothing to do with painting." I am sorry, as homeowner, I want a great paint job. The bullet points below don't adequately "pay-off" or explain the statement.

The second headline introduced a huge quality of doubt. The refrain in my brain is "Wow, they are only going to spend 1% of their attention on the actual paint job." Which leads me to "So, their college-aged enthusiastic sales person is going to give me a quick estimate, with a great price. Their college-aged painters will, show up on time, smell good, smile, finish on time and slop some paint on my house, get paint all over my driveway and use the wrong color."

Ok, now you've got me going on playing the rest of the scenario out. When I call to complain about my sloppy paint job the college-aged customer service person is going to tell me that "The painters tried hard and did their best and besides my Mom says it looks good!"

The good: Cohesive concept, they used the college theme throughout.

The bad: The text failed to communicate a compelling message. Instead instilled a feeling of distrust and doubt.

The ugly: The piece was printed on thin paper and in only two colors. It gives the impression of being cheap.

This door hanger hung itself. 

I think I will walk over to my neighbor, Todd, a local contractor with gnarly hands and a gruff attitude and ask him about painting my house. He seems like a better bet.